Posts Tagged ‘China’

BEIJING — The European Union’s foreign policy chief said Tuesday she’s confident the EU and China can agree to a common approach on climate change ahead of crucial carbon reduction talks in Paris this year.

Federica Mogherini praised China’s targets for gradually reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and said the sides should be able to agree on other goals at an upcoming bilateral summit.

“On climate change, let me say that the European Union appreciates very much the role that China has been playing and is playing,” Mogherini told reporters in Beijing.

A unified EU-China approach will help make the Paris talks a success, something that is a “common joint responsibility,” she said.

A leading U.S. envoy for climate change expressed similar sentiments on a visit to Beijing in March. That appears to be raising hopes for a global plan to cut greenhouse emissions following the last U.N. climate summit in 2009 which ended without a significant agreement.

China is the world’s biggest emitter and has pledged to level off carbon emissions by around 2030. That commitment has garnered widespread affirmation, although some experts say China’s emissions need to peak much earlier to stave off major climate consequences.

President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping struck a historic climate change agreement in Beijing last night, vowing that the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases will each undertake steep cuts in the coming decade and will work together toward a new global deal.

The United States will cut emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, a target the White House declared can be met “under existing law”—that is, without the need for Congress to pass legislation. China will peak its fast-rising emissions by 2030 at the latest, while also increasing its share of non-fossil energy to 20 percent in that same period.

The U.S. target, already coming under fire from Republicans, will go into effect in 2020 and will become America’s official offering for a new global agreement expected to be signed in Paris next year. According to the White House, the United States will double the pace of emissions cuts from a current average 1.2 percent annually to 2.3 to 2.8 percent per year in the early part of the next decade. The goal: an 80 percent cut in America’s emissions by midcentury.

The United States and China on Tuesday signed eight partnership pacts to cut greenhouse gases, bringing the world’s two biggest carbon emitters closer together on climate policy.

The deals, which involve companies and research bodies, were signed in Beijing ahead of a two-day visit to China by top Obama administration officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

The signing was attended by Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of China’s influential economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), Todd Stern, the lead US climate treaty negotiator at the US State Department, Obama adviser John Podesta and Lee Zak, director of the US Trade and Development Agency.